The Marriage of the Sun and Moon

When I was writing The Cartoon Guide to Recreational Drugs I scoured the local libraries and bookstores looking for useful and interesting historical works. The Marriage of the Sun and Moon is one of my sources.

The parts I generally took notes from were either about the drugs themselves or the prohibition of drugs. You’ll find the information garnered from these books throughout the Prohibition Politics section of this site. It will also have informed some of my own postings stored in the older Prohibition Politics archive.

If you find this information useful, you will want to search out the books themselves to read the text in context. All of the books here are at least moderately interesting.

Jerry

Andrew Weil’s Marriage of the Sun and Moon is a fascinating, if extra-ordinarily non-rigorous, journey through contrasts and consciousness. Andrew Weil.

p. 11

Yagé: “A jungle vine whose ceremonial use by Indians was noted by early explorers of the Amazon basin…”

p. 144

“Chewing coca to hike in the mountains is one of the most traditional uses of the leaves. Ancient Inca runners relied on coca to cover great distances in the high sierras and their modern descendants still measure the length of journeys in terms of cocada—the period of time that one chew of coca will sustain them.”

p. 145

“Firsthand reports about Indian uses of coca usually emphasize that regular chewing of the leaf is consistent with good health, high social productivity, and long life.”

p. 163

“…an Indian will frequently reject the bitter coca leaves with the highest percentage of cocaine in favor of the sweeter leaves which are richer in the more aromatic alkaloids.” (Richard Martin, the Role of Coca, p. 436) [at least 14 alkaloids in the coca plant]

p. 164

“Drug abuse is much more than the use of illegal and disapproved drugs by some members of society. It is the whole mentality that leads a society to make available to its citizens worse drugs rather than better ones, and many of us contribute to that mentality. The pharmacologist who teaches that coca and cocaine are equivalent, the physician who esteems synthetic white powders above natural green preparations, the judge who believes that cocaine is used mainly in combination with heroin are all as much responsible for unwise use of drugs as the user who takes cocaine in excess.”

p. 177

MDA is a derivative of amphetamine, synthesized in Germany, 1910.